President Donald Trump is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden badly in multiple polls, and he just ousted campaign chief Brad Parscale in a desperate attempt to shake things up.
And now Politico is reporting that the White House’s presidential personnel office has been meeting one-on-one with administration officials and subjecting them to "loyalty tests" designed to gauge their personal fealty to the president.
The goal of these tests, officials say, is "to root out threats of leaks and other potentially subversive acts just months before the presidential election."
One former Trump administration official tells Politico that carrying out loyalty tests during a time of pandemic, recession, and civil unrest is a massive waste of time.
"If they’re spending time trying to hunt down leakers, that’s time they’re taking away from advancing an agenda," they said. "And that’s irresponsible."
“It just seems like you could be a rocket scientist, but all they care about is whether you are MAGA,” another Trump official explained. “It is fair to do something to prepare to fill jobs in a second term, but right now, it is hard to know what the metrics are with this personnel office for being successful. There is no set criteria for what makes a good political appointee.”
